new primary care doctor NOT

[twirl]

my primary care doctor left town and I had to find another one -
I found one and went today -
she took all my history and looked at my arm with the fistula and we talked about dialysis and why I just got out of the hospital -
I told her I urinate - very little - very, very little -
as she was leaving, she turned around and told me she needed to prescribe a diuretic for me -
 

[okarol]

  That's not a good sign, but just think what you can teach her!

[kitkatz]

 You do not need to teach a doctor a thing.They do not listen anyway. That doctor needs to take good care of you. If you do not trust this one go find another one!   

[cherpep]

I'm with kitkatz.  If you do not have a confident feeling in this doctor, you need to keep looking.  You need to be taken care of, and need to trust your physician. 

[okarol]

In my experience I have found that most primary care doctors don't know everything, they learn on the job. The nephrologist is the one you need to have confidence in. But I agree, if you feel like you won't get good care, ask friends and neighbors for a recommendation for a good PCP.

[David13]

It is amazing how little some primary care doctors know about kidney disease. 

Twirl, I know you really like your nephrologist.  Maybe you could ask him to recommend a primary care doctor for you who would better understand your specific health care needs.   

[paul.karen]

No worries Universal healthcare will fix all these problems. 

Twirl  I agree look for a new primary.  If you walk into there office and there is more then ten people waiting to see her RUN.  I was so lucky to find the doctor i did.  he spends about 20 minutes per patient and his waiting room is never full.  He is in it for the people not the money
least thats how i feel.

My last primary the wait was usually over 40 minutes  from appt time. to see her have her listen to my heart and push me out the door to pay my copay.  I hated her so i left :-)

[MandaMe1986]

I don't think primary docs can do much more then treat a cold.  I know its messed up but that is how I feel.  Every time I am sick my doctor tells me to wait while he calls my neph.  Wants to know what he can give me.  It gets old after a while but then again I would rather him call and ask then give me something I shouldn't have. They don't know much about Lupus either.

[dkerr]

Time to find another physician. I think you should write her a letter and let her know why you've moved on.

[monrein]

I think that much depends on the willingness of a primary doc (we call them family docs here) to learn from a patient or from any other possible source .  Mine recently retired and my new one, well it's been four years now, is quite young and a pretty recent graduate.  However, she is fantastic, asks me lots of questions about my experiences, says she doesn't know when she doesn't know, knows how to get information when she needs to and has been superb at communicating with my neph.  He , who is a very experienced guy, the head of kidney transplant program at our largest hospital, has been very impressed with her thorough approach and she even calls me at home when things are off just to check in on me.  If she's unsure about something she calls my neph for guidance.  She's just come back from maternity leave and I did NOT like the guy who filled in for her during that time but I knew he was temporary so I didn't bother trying to train him at all.  Too much ego to deal with there.

I want a family doctor to whom I can say, "Ha, what do you think will happen if you put an end stage renal disease person on a diuretic? I hope you'll look into this because that's not a very good idea at this point, I don't think."  If they get all defensive then I'd move on to another doc (which contrary to some misinformation in the U.S we have every right to do here under our "socialist" system, we are NOT told who we can or can't go to) but if they are open to the fact that they are generalists and that kidney disease is a specialized area then I'm happy to work with them and contribute to their becoming better doctors.
I feel like I've personally trained many health care professionals here and I've even been a part of physician and pharmacist exams at the hospital in the past.  I'm always instructed not to help by adding info but only to answer the questions they actually ask.  That's not so easy for me to do but I am brief in those situations.
There is so much to know that I don't expect anyone to know everything but I do expect my doctors to make it their duty to learn whatever is required to deliver the best possible care and I expect to do my part too. 

[jbeany]

This is why my gp is an endocrinologist who treats almost exclusively diabetics and dialysis patients.